Once home to a major Ford Motor Company manufacturing plant, a 122-acre site along the Mississippi River bluffs in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has been transformed into Highland Bridge—a new mixed-use community shaped around landscape, water, and public space. Led by landscape architects Confluence, the project brings housing, parks, trails, civic spaces, and ecological infrastructure together to create a connected new neighborhood while reconnecting the former industrial site with the surrounding community and the Mississippi River.

The story of Highland Bridge begins nearly a century ago. In 1923, Henry Ford began construction of one of the most architecturally significant Ford Motor Company manufacturing plants in the U.S. At its peak, the plant employed more than 2,100 people and became an important part of Saint Paul’s identity. When the factory closed its doors in 2011, the 122-acre site was left vacant, creating both a physical and symbolic gap in the neighborhood. Over the following decade, the City of Saint Paul, community stakeholders, and a broad team of partners, including Confluence, Barr Engineering, and Ryan Companies US, came together to envision and deliver a new future for the site.

Today, the former Ford site has been reimagined as Highland Bridge, a new mixed-use community that reconnects the site with the surrounding neighborhoods and the Mississippi River. The development includes approximately 3,800 residences, 20% of which are affordable, retail, office space, parks, trails, sports fields, civic spaces, and more than 55 acres of open space.

Healing Through Hydrology

At the center of the landscape vision is a powerful idea: healing through hydrology.

Led by Confluence, the project restores the relationship between land and water by bringing Hidden Falls Creek back into the landscape and integrating an ambitious district-wide stormwater system. Barr Engineering contributed its engineering and watershed expertise to the project, working with the Capitol Region Watershed District and the broader project team to create a system that makes water management an integral part of the landscape.

Rather than treating water as something to simply collect and remove, Highland Bridge makes it a visible and meaningful part of the public realm. The district-scale stormwater system captures runoff, filters pollutants, stores water, and controls its release through five biofiltration basins, two rate-control ponds, and five underground storage and filtration systems, treating approximately 64 million gallons each year.

At the surface, this water management system becomes part of the public landscape. Treated water gathers in the central feature, moving around an island and beneath pedestrian bridges where people kayak in summer and skate in winter. From there, the daylighted Hidden Falls Creek winds through native plantings and groves totaling more than 1,000 trees, with paths and gathering spaces along its banks.

Farther downstream, sculptural overflow structures inspired by Fordite—the colorful layers of hardened automotive paint accumulated during decades of automobile production—turn necessary infrastructure into a visible trace of the site’s industrial history.

Connecting People Through Design

For Streetlife, it has been a pleasure to contribute to this remarkable public realm through the Bowie Bridge and Open Pillars.

The Bowie Bridge forms an important part of the pedestrian network, helping people move between the diverse destinations and public spaces of Highland Bridge while experiencing the renewed landscape along the way. The Open Pillars, crafted in corten (weathering) steel, introduce distinctive vertical landmarks in the public realm while incorporating functional LED lighting in a way that is both practical and visually expressive.

Together, these elements support a landscape designed not simply to move people through the site, but to invite them to slow down, gather, explore, and connect with their surroundings.

The transformation of the former Ford site has earned national recognition as well. In 2026, Highland Bridge: Ford Plant Brownfield Redevelopment received an Honors Award, Urban Design from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).